Washington sees no sign of genocide in Gaza
The US State Department has dismissed allegations over Israel’s deadly military campaign in the Palestinian enclave

US President Joe Biden’s administration has rejected genocide allegations against Israel by multiple nations, including a NATO ally, insisting that Washington sees no indication that West Jerusalem’s forces are committing such acts as they pound the Gaza Strip in a campaign to destroy Hamas.

South Africa’s government filed a genocide case against Israel last week in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and NATO member Türkiye announced its official support for the charge on Wednesday. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller denounced the allegations at a press briefing later on Wednesday, saying there was no indication that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has declared that the reunification of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland is a “historical inevitability,” according to Reuters. Xi made the comments as the island prepares to hold contentious parliamentary and presidential elections.

“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said in his New Year’s address on Sunday, according to a translation by news agency. “Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he added.

An official translation by state news outlet Xinhua used simpler phrasing, quoting Xi as saying “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose.”

A member of the Ukrainian defense industry’s new governing board has floated the idea of using an American-style “lottery” as a solution to Kiev’s conscription troubles. Former economy minister Timofey Milovanov raised the issue on Wednesday.

“Most of my readers write that the right approach to mobilization is through lottery or a draw,” Milovanov said in a Facebook post. 

“The state randomly pulls out the day and the month. People born on those dates are mobilized, others are not. And so it goes for every wave of mobilization,” he elaborated. “I don’t think this is the right approach, but what do you think?”

I've been keeping up with what's going on in education because ~children are the future~ and holy shit, we're in deep trouble. The system is currently being assaulted from multiple angles, and while COVID is a major factor in its dysfunction, it's really more of an accelerant for trends that have been ongoing for years. Here's a completely unscientific and non-comprehensive breakdown of why our future generations are going to be non-functional:

The Society

The Israel-Premier Tech (PRT) team is clearly a vehicle for advancing Israel’s image, and, indeed, advancing favourable propaganda.

Many readers will know that South Australia hosts the Santos Tour Down Under (Tour Down Under) in January each year. It is traditionally the opening event of the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) World Tour. That is the premier men’s elite road cycling tour. The Tour Down Under was established in South Australia in 1999 and has been held annually thereafter, save for the Covid induced cancellations in 2021 and 2022. In 2024 the Tour Down Under is due to take place from 12-21 January.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is confident Sweden will join the military alliance by July at the latest, he told German news agency DPA this week. 

The next NATO summit will be held in Washington from July 9-11 and the Nordic country will be a fully-fledged member by then, he said. 

Sweden and Finland abandoned decades of neutrality and both applied to become NATO allies in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Helsinki's bid was swiftly approved, Stockholm's is being held up by both Turkey and Hungary.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants the Swedish government to act against Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) members on its soil and is leveraging his veto power to get F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. 

Although Vladimir Putin’s Russia will stand or fall in Siberia’s oil and gas fields, it is first necessary to mention some of the other contingencies the Russian authorities must factor into their ongoing analyses.

Former US President Donald Trump has begun a court fight to get himself back on this year’s election ballot in Maine, arguing in a legal filing that a state official had no authority to disqualify him from the race.

Trump’s lawyers filed the appeal on Tuesday in Maine Superior Court, challenging last week’s decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to bar the ex-president from the ballot because of his alleged role in the January 2021 US Capitol riot. The case is likely to ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court – along with Trump’s disqualification from the ballot in Colorado – but he was required in Maine to begin his challenge in the state court system.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has predicted that 2024 will be “even more crazy” than the preceding four years. Musk was responding to a follower wishing for “a normal year.”

“Can we just have a normal year in 2024?” an anonymous pundit known as ‘Wall Street Silver’ tweeted on New Year’s Eve. “Don’t we deserve that after four years of crazy?”

“2024 is gonna be even more crazy is my prediction,” Musk responded on Monday.

Musk did not predict any “crazy”events that may happen, but in a series of follow-up tweets, the billionaire drew attention to the pace of AI development, rising mortality among young people after mass vaccination against Covid-19, record-breaking illegal immigration to the US, and anti-white rhetoric from South African presidential hopeful Julius Malema.

Lithuania may have been too optimistic about Ukraine’s chances in the conflict with Russia, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told the state broadcaster LRT in an interview published on Tuesday.

Speaking with LRT for the year-end special, recorded on Friday, Simonyte touched on Lithuania’s security situation and how it has been impacted by the Ukraine conflict. 

“It will probably not be too farfetched to say that we expected a very different result from the war this year than what we have today,” she told the broadcaster. “Unfortunately, that means that we have to start counting on the fact that the scenario will not be what we wanted at the beginning of [2023], before the Ukrainian offensive began.”

ONE NEEDS TO REREAD “IL PRINCIPE” DAILY… OKAY, WEEKLY… SURE, MONTHLY… DO IT ONCE A YEAR IF YOU ARE LAZY… AT LEAST ONCE IN A LIFETIME.....

... non lo potrà mai fare se non trae di quella equalità molti d'animo ambizioso e inquieto, e quelli fa gentiluomini in fatti, e non in nome, donando loro castella e possessioni e donando loro favore di sustanze e di uomini, acciocché, posto in mezzo di loro mediante quegli mantenga la sua potenza ed essi mediante quello la loro ambizione, e gli altri siano constretti a sopportare quel giogo che la forza, e non altro mai, può fare sopportare loro.

WE KOWN FROM RECENT EVENTS IN CANADA THAT THE UKRAINIAN NAZIS FOUND SOLACE IN CANADA... THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FROM "THE CANADA FILES" EXPLAINS: 

New Year’s Day always brings a degree of optimism.  It’s a fresh start. And the New Year can’t be as bad as the one just concluded, can it? 

2023 saw the war in Ukraine drag on even though it became clear after its expected failed offensive that Kiev cannot win the war, and after the Ukrainian side admitted it had a deal with Russia just after the war started that would have saved hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ lives. Ukraine would have lost less territory too had the U.S. not scotched the deal.  

And 2023 saw the start of a genocidal war by Israel against Gaza in a renewed push to complete Israel’s 1947 dream to control all of historic Palestine by driving even more Palestinians off their land.   

Labor will have – already has – squandered its time and its opportunities. It needs leadership of guts and vision, not timidity, caution and mortal terror of offending anyone.

The holiday season, about midterm in the life of the Albanese government is a good time for academics and journalists to begin making notes, commencing diaries and preparing pitches to publishers about the fate of the government.

Ukraine is a mere tool in the hands of the collective West which is using it to fight Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. He was speaking at a military hospital in Moscow where he met servicemen wounded during the ongoing conflict.

Asked about the enduring Western support for Kiev, the president said the elites of the collective West were actually the true enemy of Russia, rather than Ukraine itself. 

“The point is not that they are helping our enemy, but that they are our enemy. They are solving their own problems with [Ukraine’s] hands, that’s what it’s all about,” Putin stated.